Using SurveyMonkey Audience, we surveyed more than 1,000 people who have used an online payment website or app to understand PayPal’s core brand metrics—and see how it measures up against some of its biggest mobile payment competitors: Google Wallet, Square Cash, Venmo, and Amazon Payments.

After running thousands of brand studies, we’ve developed a sophisticated research methodology to evaluate brand awareness, product usage, competitive positioning, and other key brand metrics that best-in-class consumer brands use to monitor their performance.

So, based on our research, who do we think PayPal should watch out for? Venmo.

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See how PayPal’s brand stacks up against the competition and learn which brand metrics the big companies use to track consumer attitudes.

PayPal is the most well-known mobile payment brand

When we asked respondents to name mobile payment brands from memory (unaided brand awareness) the overwhelming majority were able to recall PayPal over other brands. 63% were able to name PayPal, whereas only 4% named Amazon Payments (which was second in the pack).

PayPal is the most used mobile payment brand

In most brand studies, we’ve seen a high correlation between awareness and usage, and this study is no different. We asked which mobile payment brand consumers would most likely use for their next purchase, and 73% indicated they would choose PayPal. Plus, 70% are likely to use PayPal in the next 6 months.

Which online/mobile payment service are you most likely to use for your next money transfer/payment?

Consumers perceive PayPal to be weak on security

We found that there are 4 key attributes that consumers care about when evaluating a mobile payment provider: security, ease of use, accessibility, and social sharing. Security ranked as the most important.

We asked respondents to rate how well each brand delivers on each attribute. Using their ratings, we created a “Feature Performance Index,” which provides a score (out of 100) that indicates how closely a brand matches these top attributes.

A high Feature Performance Score suggests that consumer brand perception is closely aligned to desired attributes.

Here’s how PayPal rated:

Overall, this isn’t a stellar score for PayPal, especially given that security is so important to users. Our data suggests that PayPal’s strong brand awareness is one of its biggest competitive advantage, as it ranks fairly low in the attributes that matter most to consumers.

Perhaps surprisingly, we found that Venmo had the most favorable perceptions about security:

While Venmo’s brand awareness is low right now, our research indicates that its product aligns closely with attributes that matter most to consumers. If Venmo can overcome its awareness problem, it could become a legitimate threat to PayPal.

For consumer brands, it’s critical to track your brand’s performance to understand consumer perceptions and how you stack up against competitors.Contact us to get a similar report for your brand today.

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